John Benseman
Dept. of Education
Research informed teaching (RIT)
1. research-led, where the curriculum content is based on the research interests of teachers
2. research-oriented, where the process of learning content is seen as important as the content itself and hence, an emphasis on learning inquiry skills
3. research-based, where the curriculum is based on inquiry-based activities rather than acquisition of content
4. research-informed teaching, which consciously draws on systematic inquiry into the teaching and learning process itself.
It is the last of these four, research-informed teaching, using relevant research findings to shape and re-shape our own teaching, that is the focus of the article.
interesting quote
"Teaching is a surprisingly private affair, where the main audience of learners tend to only relate what they witness anecdotally and without the benefit of appropriate analytical tools."
As Guernsey and Ochshorn (2011, p. 1) observed, “often these activities take place out of sight, witnessed only by principals or directors taking stock of a teacher’s skills, sometimes based on no more than a few jots about what they see from the doorway.”
A second finding in these studies is that these teaching techniques did not relate very well with current research findings. Brown (2004, p. 1) suggests that teachers’ reliance on what they have experienced rather than research findings is due “in large part because many have had little education about and understanding of adult learning principles.”
Although teachers’ responses in their interviews suggested they wanted to be learner-centered, our classroom observations quite clearly showed that instruction was highly teacher-directed. If teachers controlled the classroom, and they intended to be learner-centered, how could a teacher-directed system of instruction result? Our answer harks back to the concept of socialization. We concluded that teachers are so intensely socialized into a teacher-centered form of instructing that they teach in teacher-centered ways, despite intentions to be learner-centered (2001, p. 110).
A second approach is to draw on learners’ perspectives on what they see as effective teaching/teachers. These studies survey large samples of learners about what they believe helps them learn most effectively. They can identify particular characteristics (such as the ethnicity or gender of the teacher), their teaching behaviours (such as specific teaching methods) or their learning environment (such as various aspects of logistics in educational settings) that learners identify as helping them learn. They can also focus on general groups of learners or specific sub-groups, such as the unemployed (Benseman, 2001), literacy learners (Ward, 2003), refugees (Benseman, 2012a) or different cultural groups (Pratt et al., 1999), which gives these studies a specialist slant to their findings. This approach is also commonly employed in national and institutional ‘best teacher’ awards.
Learner-driven studies are particularly useful for showing us what learners value and are therefore probably useful for telling us what factors are likely to increase their participation rates and retention for example, but they also have their limitations. The difficulty with this approach is that learner ratings (typified in smiley-face type evaluation sheets) do not necessarily indicate learner impact in its entirety as measured in other outcome indicators
A third alternative is to refer to ‘practitioner wisdom’ of teachers who are perceived to be effective by their peers. These accounts are often insightful and useful (see for example, Nugent, 2011), but may or may not match the relevant research.
Another alternative to those discussed above is that of research-informed teaching (RIT) or its near-cousins, research-informed practice and research-based practice.
The paucity of research in other sectors inevitably means that inclusion criteria for RIT need to be relaxed somewhat to ensure reasonable numbers of studies. In the absence of research volume, or even with questionable quality research, it is argued that that even “imperfect evidence, used wisely, is better than no evidence at all” (Spencer et al., 2012, p. 136).
In sum, the quality of RIT evidence is ensured by accessing peer-reviewed literature (irrespective of its ontology), duplication and consensus of results (the degree to which there is agreement in the research about the findings) and “ultimately a preponderance of quality evidence gathered in rigorous research studies” (Stanovich & Stanovich, 2003, p. 6).
Notwithstanding major paradigm shifts, research-informed practices have a far greater chance of standing the test of time and leading to improvements in outcomes and ultimately better professional performances.
Teaching is a complex activity, involving the interplay of multiple factors in multifarious contexts. It is also involves creativity and even a certain amount of X factor that can never be quite isolated or nailed down to an analytical floor. But it also involves multiple components about which we have an increasing body of good quality research. Although the research evidence is rarely clear-cut or irrefutable, it does provide a sturdier platform to base our teaching than the alternatives of old habits and hearsay. The challenges lie in assembling the ‘preponderance of research evidence’ to inform teaching practices, to present it in forms that practitioners can understand and utilise and then to develop strategies that help teachers integrate it into their daily work with learners. Rising to these challenges is neither straightforward nor easy, but achieving it will almost certainly provide more
